On Mon, 28 Jul 2025, Deacon Patrick wrote:
I am migrating an online support group to Flarum and need an SMTP mail
server for it to send notifications from. I am, however, very new to
opensource and not technical (coming from decades of Apple).
A couple of questions:
1. Is OpenSMTPD a good fit for this usecase?
Probably. Configuration seems simpler than sendmail / postfix. I still
run sendmail because I'm familiar with it. (Using since mid 90s.)
In general, running your own email is surprisingly easy. Until
you have to deal with spam. So before long, you'll need to
learn the filtering api for opensmtpd.
To send mail, you'll need common authentication features added to SMTP.
Most importantly:
1. SPF - DNS records that list legitimate IPs for a MAIL FROM
2. DKIM - digitally signs content and selected headers with a pubkey
advertised in DNS.
So managing DNS is a requisite skill for running your own email.
